Walpole was now at the zenith of his power; in the country everything was quiet, in the Cabinet all his colleagues were submissive. He enjoyed the fullest confidence of the King and Queen, and he had apparently complete ascendency in both Houses of Parliament. The Opposition, though able and active, both in Parliament and out of it, were unable to lessen the Ministerial majority. “What can you have done, sir, to God Almighty to make him so much your friend?” exclaimed an old Scottish Secretary of State at this time to Walpole. The Prime Minister’s ascendency might have continued serenely had he not the following year (1733) been so unwise as to depart from his policy of letting sleeping dogs lie. He brought forward his celebrated excise scheme. To explain it briefly, Walpole proposed to bring the tobacco and wine duties under the law of excise, and so ease the land tax. This land tax, ever since the Revolution of 1688, had borne the great burden of taxation, and during the wars of Marlborough had risen to as much as four shillings in the pound. In consequence of the peace and prosperity enjoyed by the nation the last few years it has been reduced to two shillings in the pound, and Walpole’s proposed changes would have the effect of further reducing it or abolishing it altogether. Walpole hoped by this means to conciliate the landowners and country gentlemen, who considered that they had to bear an unfair share of the burdens of the State. Customs had always been levied on wine and tobacco, and the change proposed had regard chiefly to the method of collection. An active system of smuggling was carried on, and connived in and winked at by many people, so that the duties on wine and tobacco fell very far short of the estimates. Under Walpole’s scheme this system of wholesale smuggling would be to a great extent stopped, and he estimated that the excise duties would rise by one-sixth, which would be more than sufficient to meet the deficit caused by easing the land tax. He had the hearty support of the court, for the King’s Civil List depended to some extent on the duties on tobacco and wine, and if they were increased, the royal income would increase also.
Walpole at first was confident that he would be able to carry this scheme through without much opposition, but as soon as its purport became known, even before it was introduced into Parliament, it was evident that the Prime Minister had seriously miscalculated public opinion. Both in and out of Parliament the opposition to any extension of the excise was tremendous; the whole nation rose against it. The people persisted in regarding the proposed extension as the first step in a scheme of general excise, in which every necessary of life would be taxed, and the liberties of the subject interfered with by excise officers coming into private houses whenever they pleased. It was in vain for Walpole to vow that “no such scheme had ever entered his head”; it was in vain to reason or expostulate. Popular indignation burned to a white heat, and there were plenty of able men ready to fan the flame. The Craftsman declared that the Prime Minister’s scheme would ruin trade, destroy the liberties of the people, abrogate Magna Charta, and make the Crown absolute. The Jacobites and the Tories, though largely drawn from the landed classes who were to be benefited by this scheme, rejected with contumely the proffered “bribe” as they called it. Not only every Jacobite and every Tory, but all the discontented Whigs, all the politicians who had wished for office and had not obtained it, all the peers and members of Parliament whom Walpole at different times had insulted and aggrieved, precipitated themselves on this opportunity of attacking him.
The Prime Minister was also betrayed in the house of his friends; there were several great peers holding minor offices under the Crown who were secretly hostile to Walpole, though they had hitherto masked their animosity. They now seized this opportunity to undermine him. Among them were the Dukes of Argyll, Montrose, and Bolton, the Earls of Stair and Marchmont, and Lords Chesterfield and Clinton. These malcontents held a secret meeting, and determined to send Lord Stair to the Queen, to set forth to her the unpopularity of the excise scheme, and the danger which the Crown ran in supporting it. Lord Stair had fought in Marlborough’s campaign, and for many years had served his country with great credit as ambassador to France. Walpole had treated him shabbily in recalling him from Paris when he came into collision with Law, the financier, and for a long time there had been a great deal of ill-feeling. When the Duke of Queensberry resigned, Walpole sought to make amends by giving the ex-ambassador the post of Vice-Admiral of Scotland; this post Lord Stair still held, but he had not forgotten his resentment against Walpole.
The Queen gave Lord Stair an audience one evening in her cabinet in Kensington Palace. He burst forth into violent invective against the Prime Minister, saying: “But, madam, though your Majesty knows nothing of this man but what he tells you himself, or what his creatures and flatterers, prompted by himself, tell you of him, yet give me leave to assure your Majesty that in no age, in no reign, in no country, was ever any Minister so universally odious as the man you support.... That he absolutely governs your Majesty nobody doubts, and very few scruple to say; they own you have the appearance of power, and say you are contented with the appearance, whilst all the reality of power is his, derived from the King, conveyed through you, and vested in him.”
He then referred to a personal grievance he had against Walpole, in that Lord Isla, brother of the Duke of Argyll, had been preferred before him, and given important appointments which he (Lord Stair) ought to have filled. He quoted this as a proof of Walpole’s power over the Queen, and said: “For what cannot that man persuade you to, who can make you, madam, love a Campbell? The only two men in this country who ever vainly hoped or dared to attempt to set a mistress’s” (Mrs. Howard’s) “power up in opposition to yours were Lord Isla and his brother, the Duke of Argyll; yet one of the men who strove to dislodge you by this method from the King’s bosom is the man your favourite has thought fit to place the nearest to his.” This, however, was a little too much for the Queen, who was extremely sensitive of any mention of the peculiar relations which existed between Mrs. Howard and the King. She sharply rebuked Lord Stair, and desired him to remember that “he was speaking of the King’s servant, and to the King’s wife”. Lord Stair therefore said no more on that point, but proceeded forthwith to the excise scheme, declaring that it would be impossible to force the measure through the Lords, though corruption might carry it through the Commons. He added that even if it were possible to carry it into law, “yet, madam, I think it so wicked, so dishonest, so slavish a scheme, that my conscience would no more permit me to vote for it than his” (Walpole’s) “ought to have permitted him to project it”. The Queen again interrupted him by crying out: “Oh, my lord, don’t talk to me of your conscience; you make me faint!” This so nettled Lord Stair that he spoke plainer than ever.
When he had quite talked himself out, it was the Queen’s turn to let Lord Stair know her mind, which she did with a vigour and directness that left nothing to be desired.
“You have made so very free with me personally in this conference, my lord,” she said, “that I hope you will think I am entitled to speak my mind with very little reserve to you; and believe me, my lord, I am no more to be imposed upon by your professions than I am to be terrified by your threats.” She then reminded Lord Stair of the part he had played in supporting the Peerage Bill in the last reign, which, she held, was against the interests of the Prince of Wales and the liberties of the people, and went on to say: “To talk therefore in the patriot strain you have done to me on this occasion can move me, my lord, to nothing but laughter. Where you get your lesson I do not want to know. Your system of politics you collect from the Craftsman, your sentiments, or rather your professions, from my Lord Bolingbroke and my Lord Carteret—whom you may tell, if you think fit, that I have long known them to be two as worthless men of parts as any in this country, and whom I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience have found so.”[88]
All this the Queen said, and much more to the same effect, which convinced Lord Stair that she would do nothing against Walpole, so he took his leave saying: “Madam, you are deceived, and the King is betrayed”. He went back to the malcontent peers to tell them of the interview, from which he was fain to confess he had no results to show; but he boasted that he had at least told the Queen some home truths which she would not be likely to forget.
Finding that Walpole was determined, despite remonstrance, to introduce his excise scheme, and was supported by the King and Queen, the Opposition organised a popular agitation against it. The whole country was flooded with pamphlets, and meetings were everywhere held. Disaffection to the Government ran like wildfire throughout the land, and from all parts of the kingdom the cry was: “No slavery, no excise, no wooden shoes”—this last was aimed at the German tendencies of the court. Public agitation rose to a greater height than it had done since the Jacobite rising of 1715. The city of London and nearly every borough in England held meetings to protest against the scheme, and passed resolutions commanding their representatives to oppose any extension of the excise in any form whatever. The agitation went on for months, increasing in volume and in violence, though the scheme was yet in embryo, and the measure had not been laid before Parliament. The more timid among Walpole’s supporters took alarm and urged him to abandon the contemplated measure. But the Prime Minister, who during these years of almost absolute power had become a dictator, refused to listen. He paid little heed to the press, and declared that the whole agitation was a got-up job. If he yielded to clamour in this matter he would have to do so in others and would be left, he said, with only the shadow of power.
